[olug] Municipal Broadband controls?

[Thomas D. Williamson]

This seems really strange for Nebraska since NPPD and OPPD are publicly owned
and are the only way some areas of Nebraska would have electricity. In the
1950s and early 1960's local towns and communities had to create their own
telephone service, some were private, but others were publicly controlled as
well. 

There may be something else going on here also. This has to do with how internet
access was to be coordinated through the power tranmission grids and how local
communities have public boards as a part of the power distribution system in
Nebraska. As elected officials they are a part of a political entity as
described in the bill, so they would not be able to exercise any control over
the pricing and availablity of access to broadband internet service. 

I lived in an area of Missouri where there was no broadband internet access
through cable or DSL. Nearby there was an experimental wireless system that
would have work best as a public utilty of sorts. The investment would have
been low enough for a small town to get into it, but the profits would not have
been commercially viable, so the town could get a little out of it to cover
costs and maintenance, but not enough for a business to really see any
advantage to running it.

Another parallel area is the abilty for non-local commercial companies to sell
power to inviduals in Nebraska. In other states where there are for profit
companies there has been a move to separate the transmission lines from the
power generation. This allows other companies to "lease" transmission lines to
bring their own power to individuals. That has not worked here because
NPPD/OPPD control both the transmission lines and the power generation. 

Tom Williamson

Quoting Wes Ferrel <wferrel at ferrel.org>:

> I just read this article which was recently presented on slashdot: 
> http://www.freepress.net/communityinternet/=munibroad
> 
> I noticed Nebraska was one of the states listed as having pending 
> legislation that could potentially curtail the ability of communities to 
> offer their own, competing Broadband services. 
> 
> I've only briefly reviewed the bill proposed, and I definitely don't 
> claim to be a lawyer.  The article, however, portrays the over-all 
> situation to be one of "Big-Business" trying to avoid having to compete 
> with the communities that want to provide services for themselves.
> 
> Thought this might be something of interest to folks on this mailing list.
> 
>        Wes
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Tom Williamson